The Boob Tube and the Sandman – Does TV Affect How Our Kids Sleep?

watching tvBrett Hammond

Ipod, Fire Kindle, big screen, computer screen, this screen, that screen... all things our kids love to do before bed.  Recent research from the University of Auckland in New Zealand setout to ask the question; Do the things our kids do 90 minutes before bed affect how fast they are able to fall asleep?

 

The researchers looked at over 2,000 kids ages 5-18 and lumped their pre-bedtime activities into 1 of 3 buckets: screen sedentary time, non-screen sedentary time, and self-care.  Then they threw the onset of sleep in 4 other buckets: very early, early, late, or very late.

 

The entire group averaged about 30 minutes of screen time in the 90 minutes before bed and TV was the most common activity.  One of mine has been known to watch Zack & Cody on the Kindle, while watching Psych on the TV!  They found that the kids that had the most screen time were the ones that took the longest to...

5 Ways To Eat Locally Grown Food Without Even Getting Your Hands Dirty

Farmers Market photo by USDAgov

This article also includes the best resources for finding each of these great food sources!

 

If you don’t have the time, space, interest, or desire to grow all of your own food, then you’re in luck! There are several options that will help you, your family, and your community.  Now, I’m not going to go into a long diatribe about mass produced, long haul food.  Just for arguments sake, I’m going to assume we all agree that buying food locally from farmers we know, and farms we could actually visit, is a pretty good thing.

 

CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)

CSA farms have been around for over 25 years, but most people I talk to have never heard of them.  It’s like the garden stock market;  you buy shares with a local farmer and those shares stake your claim to a portion of the bounty.  Each week of the season you will receive a box of farm fresh goodness.  Some CSAs will...

What’s the Difference Between a Tomato and a Tomato? (Fab Five, Part 5)

Multiple Vitamin - Come On, We All Knew It Was Making The List
  There are several reasons why we all NEED to be taking a good multiple vitamin...   Where It’s Grown - It’s easy to think of soil as just the dirt where plants take root, but it’s so much more. The nutrients in the foods we eat are directly linked to microbe activity, organic matter, the mineral composition, plant genetics, and fertilization practices.  The tomato might look much the same as it did 80 years ago, but it’s not.  Average mineral content in selected vegetables, 1914 - 1997. Or your apple... Eighty year decline in mineral content of medium apple. The type of soil matters too, for example, vegetables grown in clay dense soil can have 5 times the nutrients as those grown in sand dense soil.  

 photo by Ajith_chatie
When It’s Picked - Fresh tomatoes grown in California have to be picked before they’re ripe if they’re going to be sold in Minnesota....

Vitamin D (Fab Five, part 4)

The “Fab Five” is not necessarily in the order of importance, but if it was, then this one would make a good run to hold the number one spot. Everyone associates Vitamin D with Rickets due to the role it plays in our ability to absorb calcium, but it does so much more. Here are just a few things Vitamin D deficiencies have been associated with (autoimmune diseases, weight gain, hypertension, psoriasis, eczema, insomnia, hearing loss, muscle pain, periodontal disease, athletic performance, age related macular degeneration, myopia, pre eclampsia, seizures, fertility, asthma, cystic fibrosis, migraines, depression, alzheimer’s and schizophrenia).


 photo by Life Mental Health
Some very good studies have shown that Vitamin D may reduce the risk of developing certain types of cancers such as breast, colon and prostate. If you’re a geek like I am, then give this study a read (http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2407/6/264/). They looked at 3 million incidents of cancer and 3 million cancer deaths, and compared that against UV-B exposure by location.   Vitamin D...

Omega-3… Yep, you are herring me correctly (Fab Five Part 3)

Omega-3 is an Essential Fatty Acid and it’s essential because the body can’t make it, so it needs to be consumed in our diet.  Normally the drug industry and the supplement industry are like oil and water, but the research behind the benefits of Omega-3 is so overwhelming, they actually made an Omega-3 drug called Lovaza!  Sales from that drug are over a Billion dollars a year... yep, I said the “B” word.


This email will be a little different.  Since Omega-3 fats have so many benefits, I’ll touch on what they do, and then just give you a big list of benefits with a load of resources.


Omega-3 fats are found in the cell membranes (housing) of every cell in your body.  Deficiencies will result in the cells becoming less flexible (compromising cell functioning and overall health) and less permeable (impacting release of waste products).


 photo by jbangelo

Here are the big three... Ready?... INFLAMMATION, INFLAMMATION, INFLAMMATION... ok, I guess that’s just one.  Don’t get me...

CoQ10 – Ubiquitous Ubiquinol and Ubiquinone… say that 3 times fast!

Just one of the two amazing jobs this supplement does is enough to land it on the Fab Five list.
First, let’s talk about energy... on a cellular level. Your computer runs on electricity, your car runs on gas and your cells (therefore your body) run on ATP. Much like the other fuel sources, ATP needs to be processed and is consumed. But instead of one power plant producing enough electricity to power millions of computers, your body is equipped with a power plant in each cell to produce ATP. Yep, we have trillions of little power plants using the calories we eat to produce the ATP we need.

 photo by paraflyer
There are a number of processes the body uses to produce ATP, but the main one by far is called the Krebs Cycle and CoQ10 is required. The Krebs Cycle is an amazingly elegant and complex system that creates about 30 units of ATP from just 1 glucose molecule. If CoQ10 is not...

Fab Five, Part 1

*** This article is from an email I sent to our customers a little while back, so Brock is just fine now.***   My youngest son hit his head this morning hard enough to send us to the emergency room. Sitting in the waiting room right now seems like the perfect place to start this email, since I’m surrounded by sick people.   Everyday I’m asked for recommendations, so I thought it might be helpful to write about a group of supplements that everyone should consider and why... we’ll call it the “Fab Five”. I’ll just cover 1 supplement every few days and keep it short. I’m not going to go into too much depth, so just email me if you have any questions.   Probiotics - a few trillion of our closest friends These are the friendly bacteria that have been getting so much attention in yogurt commercials recently. Now I know digestion is not a very sexy topic, but it’s important... more important than most people know. Many Nutritionists and Naturopaths call the gut “Mom”, since it’s job is to take care of us. Others say that 70% of our...

9 of the Best Brain Supplements

So now that you’re training your brain, getting plenty of sleep, and exercising, are there any brain supplements to consider to go along with your balanced diet? YEP DHA Since the brain is about 60% fat, this is probably the most important brain supplement you can take. We have already covered this, if you missed it... here’s a link. http://www.nutritiongeeks.com/blog/index.php/2012/11/30/are-you-a-fat-head/   Vitamin D A Japanese study on 527 municipal employees aged 21 to 67 found that during the fall and winter, those who had vitamin D levels in the highest quartile, were 49 percent less likely to have depression. Another study by USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University looked at 318 people with an average age of 73 over 4 years. Participants who were deficient in Vitamin D were twice as like to have dementia, Alzheimer’s, and stroke.  

 photo by tshein
Vitamin B-12 An interesting study conducted on people who...

Exercise – No Pain No Brain

Now that I started writing this, I know why I never seemed to get around to it. At 40 years old, I’m sitting here in the worst physical shape of my life... ugh. I haven’t worked out on a regular basis for over 4 years and with 3 young boys and a business, excuses are never in short supply.   When I was a powerlifter, my motivation was my desire to make the World team. I’d pick a contest date, make an 8-12 week plan and then train. I didn’t make a decision to go or not go to the gym each day, after I picked a contest, I never gave myself the option again.   A link to this article will be posted on our Facebook page and I’d love to see some comments about how you stay motivated to exercise... OR if you’re like me right now, then what’s the problem?   "Those who do not find time for exercise will have to find time for illness." - Edward Smith-Stanley (1752-1834) — English statesman, three times Prime Minister of the United Kingdom  
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